


I Keep on Falling (In and Out of Love with You)

by briizy



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: First Kiss, Glasses, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7881013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briizy/pseuds/briizy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Derek Nurse was Affected by William Poindexter in glasses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Keep on Falling (In and Out of Love with You)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this prompt  on tumblr by the queen of nurseydex, @chillwhiskey.

Dex steps into the Haus and is immediately and violently accosted by two overzealous captains. Holster and Ransom sling their arms around his shoulders and drag him forward.

“Sweet specs, bro!” Holster says, ruffling Dex’s hair.

“Spend too long staring at a computer screen?” Rans asks, arching an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Dex sighs, “coding for hours at a time is apparently not too great on the retinas.”

“Hot.” Holster grins. He nudges Ransom and says, “You’re like a bespectacled bro now! Rans and I totally have a pact, you have to j–”  
He’s cut off as a resounding crash comes from the open doorway of the Haus kitchen. All three guys turn to the source of the sound to find one Derek Nurse faceplanted into the questionably clean floorboards of the Haus hallway.

“Nursey, bro, you alright?” Rans asks.

“Mrphgmh.” Nursey says. Bitty scurries out of the kitchen and helps him to his feet, too used to his clumsiness to be genuinely worried about injury. Nursey has a slight blush dusting his cheekbones as he straightens himself out. “I didn’t know you wore glasses, Dex,” he says, attempting to regain his customary relaxed posture.

“Oh, Dex! They look good on you!” Bitty exclaims. A fierce blush spreads across Dex’s face.

“Thanks, Bits. I’m still trying to get used to them.” He scuffs a boot on the floor but looks up sharply when Nursey makes a slightly strangled noise. “Are you sure you’re alright, Nurse?”

“Uh, chyeah. I’m always fine, Poindexter. I, um, just remembered that I have to go do … something. So. Adios.” With a flick of his fingers, Nursey takes off through the back door. Dex watches him go, brow furrowed.

“That was weird, right? It isn’t just me?” he asks, turning back to the other three.

“I don’t know, man. You’re his d-partner, you know him best.” Rans shrugs and takes Holster by the arm as they retreat to the attic. “Holtzy, bro, I can take a person, okay. But a thousand roaches …” Their conversation trails off as they go up the stairs. Dex sees Bitty shaking his head in the corner of his eye.

“I’m not crazy, right, Bits? That’s not normal Nursey behavior, whatever the hell that it is.”

“Well, Dex, Nursey isn’t exactly known for his off-ice grace, bless him. One minute he’ll be having a perfectly normal conversation, the next he’s tripping all over his feet.” He trails off as his phone buzzes in his hands, smiling down at it as he drifts back into the kitchen. Dex hums to himself, squinting after Nursey and vowing to keep a closer eye on him for a while.

* * *

Dex is quietly working in the library, hunched over a keyboard and slapping together something for tomorrow’s assignment. He stretches his legs out, bumping into Nursey, who sits across from him at their small table. They had become unlikely study partners during freshman finals, mutual stress and anxiety culminating in their team-up. Dex’s key tapping and Nursey’s scratch of pencil and paper combine to make soothing background noise for them both.

Dex sniffs in annoyance as his glasses slip down his nose again. He freely admits that he’s a cheap son of a bitch (out of necessity, thank you very much); Dex knows who he is, okay. He hadn’t realized that the glasses didn’t really fit when he was in the optometrist’s office and doesn’t want to pay for any extra adjustments, so he just deals with the fact that his glasses were a little big.  
He nudges the glasses back up his nose and blinks away the fatigue in his eyes. Dex startles when he hears Nursey yelp from across the table.

“Oh, shit!” Nursey scrambles to move his books away from the spilled coffee spreading across their table.

“Goddamnit, Nurse. What the hell is your problem?” Dex whisper-shouts, conscious of the quiet nature of their surroundings. He whips out a rag from his discarded work-out bag and begins to mop up the drink.

“Sorry, I was just–um. Sorry, Dex. Look, though, nothing got hurt, okay? Chi–”

“Shut the fuck up, moron.” Dex sighs and tosses his rag back into his pack, shaking his head. He can tell that his tone is more long-suffering and fond than he means it to be.

“Do you just carry around a rag for kicks?” Nursey asks, switching gears.

“Force of habit. I worked at a mechanic shop, remember? Plus, I use it when I work out sometimes.” Nursey makes an assenting noise.

“Ah. Well, thanks.”

“Just … keep an eye on what you’re doing, okay? You’re so fucking clumsy, dude, it just gets worse when you’re distracted by something. What was it this time?”

“Nothing!” Nursey says too quickly, almost interrupting Dex.

“Right. Okay. Totally not suspicious, great job.” Dex rolls his eyes and goes back to his work, feeling Nursey’s eyes still on him. Two minutes later, he sniffs again and shifts his glasses back up. Nursey squeaks.

“Seriously, Nurse, what the fuck is up with you,” Dex demands.

“Psh. Nothing. Nothing at all.” Nursey blushes again.

“Bullshit.”

“I’ve got to go, Poindexter, sorry. We’ll continue this convo on the flip side, bro!” Nursey shoves everything into his backpack, open notebooks and all, and practically flies out of the library, leaving Dex bewildered in his wake.

“What … the fuck.”

* * *

Dex likes to be outside. This shouldn’t be news; he grew up in rural Maine near the coastline with four siblings. His parents had them out of the house as much as possible to get the smallest bit of peace and quiet. Now that he’s at Samwell, he takes what time he can to be out and about, typically in the shade to avoid burning his skin. Dex can be found lounging under trees all over the campus, depending on where he decided to sit down. This Thursday afternoon, he had chosen the Haus front lawn and sprawled out on his back, arms crossed behind his head. Rush plays through his headphones as he closes his eyes.

“Yo! Dexxxxy. What’s up?” Nursey’s low voice breaks through the guitar and Dex’s eyes slit open. “You look suuuuper mellow right now, bro.”

“Mm. It’s called relaxing, Nurse. Surely you could recognize it, you tell me I need to do it all the goddamn time.” Nursey thumps to the ground and stretches out next to Dex, one hand on his stomach and the other behind his head. He closes his eyes as Dex turns to look at him.

Dex had eyes, so he knew Nursey was attractive. Lying there, seeing him outlined in the sun, dappled light and shadow playing over his face, Dex knew he was beautiful. Dex’s eyes skate over Nursey’s profile and down to his chest and narrow waist. He smiles to himself and turns his face back to the sun. They lay together there for another half hour in silence, watching the wind shift the leaves above their heads and listening to the odd bird chirp as it flew across campus.

Nursey was the one to break the silence. “Can I ask you something?”

“… yeah?”

“You don’t really dislike me, right?” he asks in an uncharacteristically vulnerable tone. Dex huffs out a quiet laugh.

“Nah. You’re alright, when you shut up for a second and let me finish a sentence before judging.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Fuck off, yes you do.”

“… Sorry.” Dex shrugs. He squints up at the leaves again. He could feel a headache coming on after looking at so many small details for so long. He reaches over to his backpack and pulls out his glasses from the pocket, sliding them on.

“It’s fine, dude, I’ll try to listen more too.”

“Chyeah, I kno–” Nursey stops talking, and Dex shifts to look at him. Nursey’s grey-green eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open slightly as he stares at Dex.

“Nursey?” Dex gives a confused half-smile and raises an eyebrow. Nursey blows out a breath and shakes himself.

“Thought I saw something. My b, bro. Sorry to break up this little party, but I’ve got work to do. Catch you later?” Dex nods, a little put out. He had thought that he and Nursey could grab dinner or something, but no biggie. He could wait for another time. Nursey grins at him and rolls to his feet, heading inside the Haus. Dex turns back to the sky and closes his eyes.

* * *

Dex stumbles sleepily into the locker room one cold winter morning, grumbling unhappily to himself.

“Morning, Dex!” Bitty chirrups happily.

“Good morning, Bitty.” Dex replies automatically. Damn that ray of Georgia sunshine. Dex has always hated early practice, most likely a product of hours spent doing tough work on the fishing boat in the wee hours of the morning. He takes his sleep when he can get it.

Dex zombies his way over to his stall and plops down, leaning against one side. He’s only just starting to nod off again when the door bangs against the wall, announcing Nursey, Ollie, and Wicks. Dex startles up again and rubs one eye under his glasses with a sweater paw, yawning slightly.

“Aw, fuck.”

“What’s wrong, Nursey?”

“God _damnit_.”

“Alright, thanks.”

“Sorry, Wicks. It’s nothing.” Nursey drops his stuff at his locker and refuses to turn around. Dex frowns.

“Dude, it’s my job to be a bitch in the morning. What’s up with you?” Nursey groans under his breath at the sound of Dex’s voice. Dex winces back, not sure if Nursey meant for him to hear that. “Oh. Um, I’d apologize for what it is I did, but it’s too fucking early in the morning to think, so.” He turns back to his locker, shoulders hunched. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nursey turn to peek at him and deflate.

“It’s not you, man. Just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, that’s all.” He reaches out and pokes Dex in the shoulder. “Rise and shine, motherfucker, it’s time to play some hockey.” Dex sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair, pushing his glasses back up in the same motion. He hears something from Nursey’s direction again.

“Did you say something?” he asks, squinting. Nursey shakes his head a little frantically.

“Nah, bro. You’re hearing things, you need more sleep.” Dex hums in agreement. He snuggles down into the thick neck of his sweater and closes his eyes for a moment of respite, hiding his hands inside the too large sleeves. “Fuck.” Dex looks back at Nursey, clearly unhappy at being disturbed again. To his surprise, Nursey won’t look back at him, hiding his face as he quickly begins to change into practice gear.

“Fine. I’m up. Raring to go. Regular bright-eyed bushbaby over here.” Dex says.

“Come on, boys, let’s go!” Rans shouts as he leads the first few out of the room and towards the ice. Dex groans.

“Fuck early practices.”

* * *

Dex rents out one of the quiet rooms in Samwell’s major library sometimes when he wants to use one of those huge whiteboards to write out some larger equations or diagrams. He’s standing in front of one such problem, muttering to himself, when Derek Nurse bangs his head on the table behind him.

“Fuck this assignment. Fuck it to Boston and back.” Dex turns around to see him slowly slip out of his chair and puddle onto the floor.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Nursey. It can’t be that bad,” Dex says, walking around the table.

“I’m going to die.”

“I’m not going to your funeral.”

“What?! Dex, why?” Nursey flops over to look plaintively at him. “I would cry at your funeral, man.”

“That’s because you’re an emotional idiot.”

“Hey!”

"Come on, up you get.” Dex pulls Nursey to his feet, putting his hands on his shoulders and forcing him down on the chair. “Alright, inspiration. Um, put your phone on shuffle and pick something in the first song to write a poem about. Boom.” He turns back to his problem, pulling his marker out from behind his ear. There’s silence for about ten seconds before—

“What are you doing?” Dex sighs.

“I’m trying to see if I can compute the edit distance between these two strings of this length in sub-quadratic time,” he says absentmindedly. He turns and takes in Nursey’s blank stare. “Okay, um, it’s like taking a string, which is like a word, and seeing how many times I have to operate on it, change it, until it matches the other string. Like, from kitten to sitting. Replace the ‘k’ with an ‘s’, the ‘e’ to an ‘i’, and insert a ‘g’ on the end. That has an edit distance of three. Make sense?”

“I think so. What did you say at the end? Subaquatic time?” Dex laughs.

“No, I said sub- _quadratic_ time. It’s kind of tough to explain if you don’t know about time complexity of an algorithm and computer what are you doing?” Dex runs through the end of the sentence as Nursey stands up abruptly. He rounds the table quickly and comes to a stop before Dex, green eyes trained on Dex’s surprised face.

“Fuck it.”

Nursey leans forward and curves a hand around Dex’s jaw, another sinking into his short hair. He tilts his head and presses his lips to Dex’s softly, tilting forward as his weight transfers. Dex’s hands flutter uselessly by his sides, glasses pressed to the bridge of his nose. Nursey leans back after a few seconds, eyes closed.  
He blinks them open slightly when Dex draws in a shocked breath.

“But—you—what?” Nursey grins shyly at him.

“You’re so goddamn smart, Dex. I couldn’t handle you with the complicated shit you were going on about and the glasses and—”

“The glasses?” Dex asks. “You like my… oh.” The past two weeks of interaction flash back through his mind. “Oh.” He refocuses on Nursey’s face and finds it growing more anxious the longer Dex mulls it over.

“I’m not going to apologize for liking you, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I’m not that guy, I get it. Don’t worry about it, Dex,” Nursey says, speeding up as he gets increasingly panicked.

“Nursey.”

“It’s cool! You don’t need to say it!”

“Nursey.”

“Seriously! I’m gonna get my things and go, I’ll see you later! Hopefully.”

“ _Derek_. You like me?”

“Uh. Was that not clear? I thought I was pretty clear. My hills are alive with the sound of your music, I don’t know how else to say it, man.” A slow grin spreads across Dex’s face, unnoticed by Nursey, who is attempting to pack his things but only succeeding in missing his backpack and creating more of a mess for himself.

“Hey.”

“What, Dex? What do you want?” Dex spins him around and takes his face in his hands.

“Remember that talk we had where I asked you not to judge me so quickly?”

“Yup.”

“Now is one of those times.”

“Ah.”

Dex leans forward hesitantly and presses a kiss to a frozen Nursey’s cheekbone, dropping another on the tip of his nose before moving down to his lips, leaving a few soft kisses behind as he pulls away.

“I like you too, dick.”

Nursey’s grin lights up his entire face as he tackles Dex, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“Fuck yes, we’re gonna be awesome together.” Dex lets out a deep, echoing laugh as he takes in Nursey’s expression.

“Yeah, we are.”

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://fleuryofactivity.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> feel free to send me other prompts there if you like this!


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